“What?” he asked.
“Give me a second.” I jogged into the bedroom.
“Did you lose the contract? Tell me you didn’t lose the contract.”
“I didn’t lose it. It’s here.” I threw the covers off the bed, then pushed them aside so I could search the floor. Nothing.
“Matilda, you arekillingme,” he said from the doorway. “We have to go. Now.”
“Just a second.”
“There are no more seconds,” he said.
“Oh!” I snapped my fingers. “Hold on.” I pulled the duffel off my shoulder and opened it, dragging out the scarf.
“What–”
I yanked on the thread, stitches slipping away, freezing time and muffling the world with a heavy silence. Abraham was frozen in place, his mouth still open.
I carried the scarf with me and continued to pull on stitches as I searched for the piece of paper. Finally found it, a third of the scarf later, on the desk in the sitting area.
I gathered scarf and thread in one hand and quickly signed the bottom of the agreement.
“Thank you, Grandma,” I whispered. The silence lifted, the world buzzed back to life and time picked up again.
“—are you,” Abraham said from the other room. “Fuck.” He strode through the door. The look on his face made me laugh.
“How did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Disappear?”
“I didn’t disappear. I walked right past you. And found the contract.” I held up the paper to prove it. “I’m quicker than I look. Don’t forget it.”
“You signed?”
I glanced down at the paper, the reality of what I’d done sinking in. “Um. Yes. I did. Ten years.” The last came out too soft.
I’d just given away a decade of my life.
Abraham was suddenly in front of me. “Matilda?” He touched my shoulders, then drew his palms down to grip my upper arms. His hands were hot as furnaces.
I felt like I’d been swallowed in ice.
“We need to go.”
I was too frozen to move.
“We really need to go,” he said a second or two later when I still hadn’t moved.
I heard him, I was just stuck on the reality of what I’d just done.
His hands shifted, sliding up and up until the heels of his hands were braced beneath my jaw, his fingers spread back into my hair, his thumbs stroking the corners of my lips gently.
“Matilda?” he said softly as he lowered his head to mine, his eyes shifting to gaze at my lips, then back to my eyes.
He was going to kiss me.
